Childhood Food Memories

[Suvir Saran]

Survir, your lyrical writing skills and remarkable recall of nuance are truly wonderful.  I felt as though I, too, were in that house, in that kitchen, searching along with that small boy the night sky for that one special star.

If eGullet did not a single other thing for me, I would feel blessed to have been introduced to you.

Jaymes I feel fortunate to have found many good people through eGullet. You are one of those that inspirits me with hope for a tomorrow that is redolent with more good stuff to make future memories with.

I enjoy your writings around the site. How is your novel coming along?

[stellabella]

blue, it's nice that this thread got dredged up again--what fun to read. and now i am thinking of my mom's banana pudding.....

[Blue Heron]

Suvir, what a coincidence that you should bring this older thread up today, as I was also re-reading it again earlier today too (we were on the same wave length), as I remembered you had written about your grandmother on it, and I wanted to read that beautiful story again. Your grandmother was a great lady, and I especially was warmed by how kind and gentle she was and the respect she had for all living creatures (especially feeding little birds with her extra food). Please accept my sincerest condolences on your grandmother's passing.

stella - yes, I've had an enjoyable time too, reading it from start to finish again. I had forgotten these great stories and it's a pleasure to read them again.

[Suvir Saran]

blue, it's nice that this thread got dredged up again--what fun to read.  and now i am thinking of my mom's banana pudding.....

Stellabella,

Please share details of your moms banana pudding. Has me thinking about the recipe I share in my cookbook.

How is your mothers banana pudding made?

[stellabella]

i swear to you--i haven't got it in front of me because--IT'S OFF THE NILLA WAFER BOX.

someone tell me, is there still a recipe for banana pudding on the box? it would be from scratch, not from any mixes, etc.

[Suvir Saran]

i swear to you--i haven't got it in front of me because--IT'S OFF THE NILLA WAFER BOX.

someone tell me, is there still a recipe for banana pudding on the box?  it would be from scratch, not from any mixes, etc.

Will check the box for you Mam. One moment please.

[jess mebane]

Oooh!! How fortunate to have stumbled across this thread today! Jaymes or Soba, can you break down the elementals of pancit for me, once and for all? My best friend's mom made KILLER pancit when we were kids, but now she only breaks it out if somebody's pregnant and has cravings... And she won't tell us how to make it either, wench.

[Huevos del Toro]

One Grandmothers’ Roast Leg of Lamb.

The other Grandmothers’ Swedish Hash, Swedish Pancakes, Swedish Meatballs, and a never-ending supply of sugar cookies.

[Huevos del Toro]

It would be from scratch, not from any mixes, etc.

Sorry, the Kraft/Nabisco site has the recipe but it uses prepackaged pudding mix.

[heyjude]

How did I miss this thread the first go round? I wonder if anyone else remembers the Freihoffer's horse and wagon coming through the streets of Schenectady. Kids went on the Freddy Freihoffer show on TV for their birthdays. Long after all other deliveries(i.e. milk and eggs)were made by panel truck, bakery items, many fondly remembered, were brought to the door by George, our local routeman. We called the horse George, too. My Mom had regular orders every week of two kinds of bread and a pound cake called Louisiana Ring, but sometimes we were allowed to pick something from the tote George carried to the door. The neighbor kids got to pick miniature cupcakes with pastel frosting, but we never could because it would've hurt my Grandmother's feelings. She baked all the cookies and cinnamon rolls for the family. Which reminds me, my mother made all the birthday cakes with writing and roses on them and all the pies. Most were seasonal, but on Thanksgiving, she made all the favorites. Some were with fruits she and my Grandmother had canned all summer. I think this is the list: 1 apple with cinnamon and one without , pumpkin, chocolate, blueberry, lemon meringue, strawberry rhubarb, cherry, and pecan. The other big hometown memory is of Stewart's Make Your Own Sundaes. Along with a choice of ice cream flavors came a tray with syrup pitchers filled with every topping from hot fudge to pineapple. After you had heaped on a mountain of sauces, the waitress aerosoled whip cream on top. If you ate the toppings before the ice cream was gone, you could add more. My other memories are less about food than about being mortified that my elderly Grandfather offered everyone who came to the door, from neighbors to the doctor who made house calls, " a gless schnapps". Boy, nostalgia's not what it used to be.

[maggiethecat]

Boy, nostalgia's not what it used to be.

Sorry, but your post reminds us that nostalgia is alive, kicking, and better than ever. Thanks, Jude.

[Jaymes]

Oooh!! How fortunate to have stumbled across this thread today!  Jaymes or Soba, can you break down the elementals of pancit for me, once and for all?  My best friend's mom made KILLER pancit when we were kids, but now she only breaks it out if somebody's pregnant and has cravings...  And she won't tell us how to make it either, wench.

Well - pancit means a dish containing noodles. Probably adapted from the Chinese.

And, like noodle dishes everywhere, you can have countless recipes for them. It doesn't even refer to a particular type of noodle. So, I hate to be discouraging, but asking someone for a recipe to create a particular pancit dish would be like saying, "I had a friend that made a great Italian pasta dish."

I make a pretty-good chicken pancit dish - veggies, etc.

But you can put in it anything you like. What did the dish you remember have in it??

Edit: Just had a thought. Pancit Luglug is a traditional celebratory dish - for birthdays. So, does that sound familiar? It has a reddish sauce - with seafood and pork and garlic and annato.

Edited January 16, 2003 by Jaymes (log)

[jess mebane]

that sounds close. There were noodles, some sort of oyster/fish sauce, vegies and the best seasonal seafood, my fave being crawfish. And you'd squeeze lime wedges over a serving. Yum.

[NeroW]

Lutefisk, beef carbonnade, pork and onions, tarragon chicken and carrot sauce, carrot soup, spinach soup, egg drop soup (recipe from the Klutz "Kids Cooking" book, I still have and use the primary-colored measuring spoons that came with the book) arm-roast burritos, soft Archway oatmeal cookies from my grandma's glass jar (infused with just a hint of cigarette-smoke), lutefisk, the bonbons that Hagen-Daaz used to make, Jello Pudding Pops, black magic cake, red velvet cake, something called "Kowloon" chicken made in the green crock-pot with pineapple chunks and water chestnuts, Svedish limpa bread, chicken breasts stuffed with crab meat, meatloaf n ketchup, lutefisk, cornichons and lox, lasagne (known to my sister as "lah-gag-you") all manner of boiled white foods, tomato pudding, my grandpa's fried bluegill and perch and pumpkin-seeds, fried codfish balls, creamed corn straight out of the can, Cincinnati chili, some sort of "risotto" that my mom always fixed in her Le Creuset dutch oven with bits of turkey ham in it that I absolutely loved, grilled cheese with yellow mouseturd, banana smoothies, spinach salad with warm dressing, soft-boiled eggs in blue cups, frozen bananas and frozen grapes and frozen peas, lutefisk, delicious red lentil dal at my hippie aunt's house (also pot brownies on accident), Texas caviar, potatoes roasted in salt, etc.

But, by far, my most vivid food memory (perhaps my most vivid memory period) is of watching cartoons and eating frozen peas out of orange, bite-mark-ridden Tupperware cups with my little sister, we must have been about six and four at the time. My mother was stuffing a whole chicken in the kitchen and singing one of her made-up songs. Suddenly, my mother came running out of the kitchen, with the chicken, holding its legs and arms and moving them to make the bird "puke" the stuffing out of its cavity as if it were a giant mouth. She was laughing uncontrollably and there was stuffing falling all over the carpet. She said: "look, girls, the chicken's very, very sick! We have to call the pizza man, right now!" My sister took one look at that chicken, threw her peas, and started screaming. She is a vegetarian now. To this day, when anyone stuffs a bird in my family . . .

[maggiethecat]

My mother was stuffing a whole chicken in the kitchen and singing one of her made-up songs.  Suddenly, my mother came running out of the kitchen, with the chicken, holding its legs and arms and moving them to make the bird "puke" the stuffing out of its cavity as if it were a giant mouth.  She was laughing uncontrollably and there was stuffing falling all over the carpet.  She said: "look, girls, the chicken's very, very sick!  We have to call the pizza man, right now!"  My sister took one look at that chicken, threw her peas, and started screaming.  She is a vegetarian now.  To this day, when anyone stuffs a bird in my family . . .

So, Nero...how do you feel about lutefisk today?

And your mother's chicken-stuffing incident deserves to become a legend, even at eGullet. If you don't mind me asking, was your mother Naturally Wacky, or were Other Forces at Play?

Red Velvet Cake. How could I forget?

[NeroW]

Lutefisk--conflicted. I don't know if I should give in and love it or not.

Mother--Naturally Wacky.

[Jaymes]

Red Velvet Cake.  How could I forget?

Actually, I remember Red Velvet Cake as being pretty tasty.

Although I do recall that once at a party a particularly enthusiastic and imaginative hostess made a big loaf-like Red Velvet Cake that she decorated to be an armadillo.

She thought it was pretty funny. The occasion, you see, was a going-away party for some people who were moving to Texas (we were living in Alaska at the time).

Well, cutting into the armadillo, with the red insides was, I'm sure, almost as disgusting as the "stuffing from the mouth of the chicken" deal.

It really looked awful - the sharp knife slicing through that dark red body.

And as for how it tasted....well, I don't know.

Most of the party-goers declined.

As did I.

[gfron1]

Walking around today I had a food memory that I'm not sure what it was triggered by. In the early to mid 1970s (way back then), I used to get the predecesor to Pop-Tarts. They were oval, where the pastry was a strip wound into an oval, and filled with fruit filling. And they were topped with large crystal sugar instead of frosting. Does anyone else remember these things?

[heidih]

Walking around today I had a food memory that I'm not sure what it was triggered by.  In the early to mid 1970s (way back then), I used to get the predecesor to Pop-Tarts.  They were oval, where the pastry was a strip wound into an oval, and filled with fruit filling.  And they were topped with large crystal sugar instead of frosting.  Does anyone else remember these things?

←

I don't think they were before "poptarts" - I think they were a riff on them- called Danish Go Rounds? I was just thinking of them the other night for some reason. The jam was in the middle of the rolled dough and the sugar was crystals were crunchy. Way better than poptarts.

[gfron1]

Wow! We must be long-lost siblings. I've asked people about these for years and years and no one knew what I was talking about. In the 70s I would sit in my midwest familyroom many Saturday mornings watching HR Puffenstuff or Land of the Lost scarfing a whole box of those things! Thanks for reminding me of the name.

And here's a pic:

[ChrisOC]

I know I could come up with a huge list, but let me just go with the first two things that came to mind.

1 The pineapple upside down cake my mother used to make in the iron frying pan

2 Peppermint stick ice cream in a sugar cone at Howard Johnson's

[TarteTatin]

One "chicken" lobster for 7.95 and two for 8.95 in Groton, Connecticut.

About 37 years ago.

Right by EB/General Dynamics.

Dad said I could order two if I ate them both.

I did, at 9 or 10 years old.

Every morsel. Didn't leave anything.

[Lilija]

Walking to the deli, one block away, to order one of their amazing roast beef subs, a bag of Smartfood popcorn, and a bottle of iced tea. It was a short walk, but the scent of the sub leaking through the butcher paper wrap was enough to make me break into a jog. It was my first "alone" trips to the store, to get dinner for my mom and I to share.

10 years later, I wound up working a that same deli, after consuming God knows how many subs, I finally learned how to make them. The place closed, about 8 years ago, and I have still never had a sandwich so perfect, as the ones from Kellers.

[GlorifiedRice]

Hoagies and Cheesesteaks from 2J's in Chester, Pa...

Strawberry Shortcake and Checkerboard Cakes from Kyj's Bakery in Brookhaven, Pa...

This Ice Cream cake roll from the family store over the Highland Ave bridge in Chester, Pa...

The pies and candied apples from Linvilla Orchards in Linvill, Pa...

Scotto's Pizza in the Granite Run Mall, Lima, Pa

Sky Bars...Push Ups...Pepsi and Dr Pepper in the tallll glass returnable bottles...

My grandmothers roast pork with browned potatoes that I cannot duplicate.

The Surf and turf, Ruebens, Spaghetti and meatball (only one), House salad, stuffed taters, frogs legs, onion soup from my uncles restaurant and sneaking maraschino cherries from the bar.

And lastly Stouffers ham and cheese crepes...

[mzrb]

And the Danish Go-Rounds memory spurred me to thinking of some of my favorite childhood sugar-rush memories: Morton's used to make frozen honey buns, that i would bake up in the oven and they were a sugar-donut fantasy...basically giant yeast donuts, heavy on the cinnamon and the glazed frosting that was soooooo hot fresh out of the oven but irresistible.

And that memory reminded me of the Sara Lee pecan danish we used to get on special occasions...also with scalding hot sugar swirls on the top. And then that reminded me of the Entenmann's cheese danish twist with raspberry jam. Which they still make and sell at my local grocery and i walk by it with longing.

...and then THAT reminded me of the Entenmann's cupcakes of Days Gone By that had at least 2 inches of frosting on the top of them. 3 chocolate and 3 vanilla. Nowadays they are these anemic boiled-y sugar icing tops that even my sugar-fiend 4 year-old daughter rejected. Oh, yes, I trained as a chef, and oh yes, i can make a killer cupcake...but if I could eat a REAL Entenmann's cupcake, that would bring me some junk food joy.